How Ranker doubled its viewability rates in 15 months

August 8, 2017

Inc.

Ranker.com Gets Tens of Millions of Unique Visitors Each Month, But There’s a Lot More to the Story

July 28, 2017

If you aren’t familiar with Ranker.com, you probably live under an Internet-free rock. By allowing visitors to weigh in on subjects like the best movies of all time (with 2.6 million votes), the druggiest rock stars of all time (a competition no one wants to win), and the best websites to waste your time on (which is kinda meta), Ranker pulls in 45 million unique visitors and averages 10 million votes per month on topics ranging from sports, gaming, entertainment, politics… you name it.

Digiday

How Ranker uses visitors’ votes to find readers on Facebook

April 25, 2017

Most publishers that share a story about George Clooney on Facebook would know to target the segment of its audience that’s interested in George Clooney. Fewer would consider targeting the post at people who are interested in Conway Twitty or Cristiano Ronaldo, though.

The Los Angeles-based startup Ranker does, and that’s been a major reason for its climb on Facebook. The site, with more than 26 million readers a month, according to comScore, uses its data gathered from readers’ votes to see how much affinity fans of celebrities, movies, athletes and other pop cultural entities have for other similar entities. Knowing this not only informs Ranker’s content strategy but helps it target readers more effectively on Facebook.

UPROXX

These Are The Best Tasting Whiskies On Earth, According To Twenty Thousand Whiskey Drinkers

April 17, 2017

Oh, how we love to rank the things we love. And, oh, how we love whiskey (and whisky). Put those two things together and you have yourself something worth arguing over late into the night while enjoying a nice bottle glass of the caramel-colored stuff. Yet it’s all a little futile at the end of the day. We all come to the tasting table with palates at different stages of refinement and our own entrenched tastes.

Which brings us to: Ranking shit. Public opinion often casts the deciding ballot about what’s good and what’s swill. It’s not ideal and we don’t have to listen to the masses, but that’s often just the way things go.

The Hollywood Reporter

‘Fate of the Furious’: Where the Rock and Vin Diesel’s Fans Really Differ

April 13, 2017

Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel can’t quite seem to get along, and it turns out, even their fans can’t agree on things.

The team at Ranker Insights has crunched the site’s data to look at the different tastes of both action badasses’ fans, and some of them are pretty surprising. A few highlights from the site, in which users can vote on their favorites in pop culture.

Maxim

The Top 10 Craft Beers, As Ranked By Actual Beer Drinkers

April 7, 2017

Since today is National Beer Day, it only makes sense that we mark this fabulously foamy holiday with a nod to America’s ongoing craft beer renaissance.

There are now more independent U.S. breweries in existence than ever before, and these indie beermakers are creating some seriously interesting craft brews for drinkers who might want to upgrade their suds game from that usual can of PBR (not that there’s anything wrong with drinking Pabst, mind you.)

Paste Magazine

America’s Favorite Comfort Food Has Been Determined

April 5, 2017

The top 10 is hardly surprising, but Ranker’s top 50 includes some puzzling results. For example, mozzarella sticks come in at just #24, despite basically being cylindrical, snackable grilled cheeses themselves. Tomato soup is ranked a lowly #48, demonstrating a total inability to ride grilled cheese’s coattails, despite the deliciousness of their pairing. And perhaps most disturbing of all, tacos don’t even make the list. Sacrilege!

Find the full list here, and debate your friends and loved ones about why burritos deserved to be much higher than #17. (Warning: don’t read on an empty stomach.)

refinery29

This Is America’s Favorite Comfort Food

April 5, 2017

After a rough day, there’s nothing quite as cathartic as curling up on the couch for a Netflix marathon with your favorite comfort food in hand. Some of us go straight for the sweets, while others are partial to savory foods — so Ranker took a poll to determine America’s favorite comfort food once and for all. (Well, at least until the next survey is conducted.)

A grilled cheese sandwich took the well-deserved top spot. After all, who can resist that gooey melted cheese smacked between two slices of carbohydrate deliciousness? Congrats, grilled cheese — this win was definitely not rigged.Read Full Article here

Los Angeles Times

Like Kanye West but hate Chipotle? Start-up Ranker helps brands tailor ads for you

December 8, 2016

If Fox Searchlight Pictures wants to increase attendance at its new film “Jackie,” it might consider pitching fans of “True Detective,” “The Hunger Games” and Keira Knightley.

So says Ranker, a Los Angeles start-up that gets more than 10 million votes on its website each month about what’s cool in Hollywood, sports, music, gaming and politics. Ranker’s tracking shows that people who rank “Jackie” star Natalie Portman as a great actress tend to also hold in high regard the popular HBO show, the teenage film franchise and English actress Knightley…

EXTRA

Ranking The Emmys!

September 17, 2016

Emmys weekend is here! In honor of TV’s biggest night, we’re looking back at the best hosts of all time and more, courtesy of Ranker.com.

Ranker users have spoken, and voted on their favorite MCs over the years. So far, Ellen DeGeneres is in the lead, followed by Neil Patrick Harris, Johnny Carson, Jimmy Fallon and Dick Van Dyke. Don’t agree? Cast your vote!

The Huffington Post

How Ranker Is Using Data To Reinvent The List

September 7, 2016

These days everyone has an opinion, whether it’s on politics, sports, pop culture, or any number of other topics.

If there’s a topic on the web, there’s a high probability that a group of people feels passionate about it. And in today’s connected environment, they’re going to share their thoughts and make their voices heard….

CinemaBlend

The Most Popular Marvel Character in Each State

May 10, 2016

Do you know who REALLY loves The Incredible Hulk? People who live in North Carolina. And how about Iron Man? Well, he’s reportedly incredibly popular in Alaska, Idaho, and Pennsylvania, to name just a few states. These aren’t just random assumptions. These are the results of a survey conducted by Ranker on popular Marvel heroes, ranked by U.S. state.

Ellen for President

April 13, 2016

Mentalfloss

The 10 Most Popular Cereals, Ranked by Fans

March 7, 2016

..Ranker set up a public poll to settle the arguments once and for all. The results: While many prefer the sugary classics of their childhood, a vocal minority crave the healthier, fiber-filled options, according to the poll of more than 1000 people.

March 2, 2016

CinemaBlend

The 10 Best Actors Never To Win An Oscar, According To Fans

February 28, 2016

…Ranker polled its readership to find out the most talented actors who’ve yet to win an Academy Award. The list is a murderer’s row of extremely gifted performers, though the main thing they all share in common is the sad fact that their names haven’t been called from the stage of the Oscars

Forbes

Why The Carolina Panthers Are More Important To Millennials Than The Denver Broncos

January 27, 2016

120 Sports’ Millennials’ Athlete Index is a list of the top 40 professional, Olympic and college athletes that matter most to millennial sports fans based on research conducted in conjunction with Ranker (a site for crowd-sourced rankings of pretty much anything you can think of).

E! Online

We Can Now Guess Your Favorite Celebs Based On Your Halloween Candy of Choice

October 27, 2015

The folks over at Ranker have divined some pretty fascinating answers to those hard-hitting questions. They’ve even determined the answer to the age-old quandary: If you like M&M’s, do you like Eminem? Sadly, the answer is no. Shocking, right? If you’ve always been curious as to what your sweet tooth says about your celeb-loving ways, answers await…

24 Brands That Improve the Quality of Everyday Life

October 22, 2015

Yahoo! Health

America’s Top Superstitions-And Where They Come From

October 21, 2015

They may seem old-fashioned, but superstitions are still alive and well, according to a new survey. Crowdsourcing website Ranker.com polled 18,000 people on the superstitions they believe in and found that, as a whole, people are still very superstitious…..

Rotten Tomatoes

A TV Show Based on the Serial Podcast is in the works, plus other news

October 1, 2015

As Saturday Night Live heads into its 41st season, the crowd-sourced website Ranker polled 97,000 users on the best characters in the show’s history. The number-one result? Matt Foley, the motivational speaker who lives down by the river, as portrayed by the late, great Chris Farley.

Salon

Do people look at you and think “angry, distant, mean”? You might be suffering from RBF

September 21, 2015

…Men, of course, experience the same effect but the usual double standard applies. Guys with facial crevices and gray, thinning hair are distinguished, women with graying hair and frown lines are just sour old bags.

Donald Trump’s default expression is one of the finest examples of RBF you can find, but oddly, his puss hasn’t made the Ranker.com list…

Los Angeles Business Journal

Ranker Adds Video Content, Former Yahoo Exec

August 24, 2015

Everything is better in video form.

At least that’s the thinking of Ranker, which crowdsources rankings on topics such as “Who Is the Greatest President of All Time?” or “The Best Actors in Film History.” It is reformatting some of its content into scripted videos and has hired former Yahoo homepage Editor Inger Lund Carter to lead the effort.

Ranker’s users, about 20 million unique visitors a month, vote up or down for items on a list, thus crowdsourcing a ranking. The company has been rehashing those text and image-based listicles into video productions with humorous commentary and supplementary video clips over the last several weeks.

Carter, now its vice president of content and programming, will lead an effort to produce 20 to 25 short videos a week for distribution on social networks.

“There’s a decent amount of people that would consume any content in video form,” said Chief Executive Clark Benson, adding: “Our sales strategy is to build custom content for brands and video is what is in the most demand right now.”

Adweek

Ranker Opens New York Office

August 20, 2015

The East Coast office for a site that gets upwards of 20 million monthly unique visitors opened Aug. 1. Already, there are four employees working out of the Madison and 42nd Street location, with more to come.

Joining a pair of advertising ops folks and a content staffer is David Cohn, executive vice president, sales. Cohn was previously with Askmen and Crave Online. Meanwhile, at Ranker’s Los Angeles headquarters, former Yahoo front-page editorial director Inger Lund Carter is the new vice president, content and programming. The site has also announced it is launching Ranker Video…

Quartz

Americans claim to love craft beer, but they actually buy Bud Light

June 5, 2015

…The people have spoken and they love craft beer. But they buy Bud Light. Ranker.com, a crowdsourced (if unscientific) ranking site, posted the results of a poll of more than 3,500 voters casting 44,000+ votes for their favorite of 386 beers. The full list of the world’s favorite beers is available on the website, but Ranker also provided Quartz with the results for the approximately 2,000 participating American voters….

Mental Floss

Favorite Fast Food Burgers by State

June 2, 2015

…Most people love a good burger. But where is the best fast food joint to pick one up? Everyone has a different opinion, and many of those hungry people voiced them on Ranker.com. These are the results of a poll—so if you have any objections, be sure to head over to Ranker and put in your two cents on the next one…

The Street

National Burger Month

May 23, 2015

…In honor of National Burger Month (yes, it’s real), crowdsourcing ranking site Ranker.com determined “The Best Fast Food Burgers” in the country. Ranker’s poll asked voters to pick their favorite from among 46 different burgers, with about 42,000 votes piling in to determine who was the king of the beef…

Monsters & Critics

Best War Movies List

May 20, 2015

…Good war films give average people a taste of what our brave troops go through on the battlefield and throughout their daily lives. While not all of these films feature war, they all use military service as a central theme. Ranker.com created a poll that tabulated the favorites of each generation, with all branches of the U.S. military represented, although admittedly, fewer films have been made about the Coast Guard….

USA Today

Best Jobs in the World

May 13, 2015

…When I looked up “best jobs in the world,” Google directed me to ranker.com. People voted on dream jobs and in the No.1 spot was movie critic. No surprise. It was followed by private island caretaker and National Geographic traveler. Friday marks my final film review for USA TODAY….

The Huffington Post

National Honesty Day

April 30, 2015

…Well maybe on a normal day, but April 30 is National Honesty Day. And all lies in those 24 hours are considered EGREGIOUS in the eyes of the universe. Ranker.com, an online crowdsourced rankings company, has amassed more than 27,000 votes from users to determine which lies people use the most often…

Ryot

National Honesty Day

April 30, 2015

…Some lies are meant to soften others from the blow of honest, painful truth. Others are meant to shield ourselves from judgment or benign retribution for forgetting someone’s name or running late. In any case, today, April 30, we celebrate National Honesty Day, an annual reminder that little lies don’t excuse our obligation to the virtue of truth.

In observance of this important holiday, the web’s top crowdsourced rankings generator, Ranker (duh), put together a list of the most popular lies we tell….

Cosmopolitan

National Beer Day

April 7, 2015

…It’s national beer day over in America, marking the anniversary of the end of the prohibition (April 7, 1933, FYI). Which means two things. Firstly, an excuse to get a little tipsy on a Tuesday. And number two, E! took a look at Ranker.com’s poll, which got the general public to choose which celebs they’d most like to grab a beer with. Meaning we get to judge their choices. YAY…

UPI

Grab a Pint it’s National Beer Day

April 7, 2015

…On April 7, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt took the first step in allowing people to legally buy and sell beer for the first time since the Prohibition began 13 years prior. To commemorate this momentous event in history, Ranker.com created a voting list of famous men and women you’d want to have a beer with. The results are in …

E! Online

National Beer Day

April 7, 2015

…So in honor of this momentous occasion, let’s take a moment to pour one out in the name of history. That being said, if you had a choice of choosing any celeb to enjoy a cold one with, who would it be? According to Ranker.com, Jennifer Lawrence and Bill Murray top the lists of 10 most famous men and women you’d like to have a beer with….

The Wrap

Daily Show Replacement

March 9, 2015

…Ranker.com’s readers have spoken, and they really want Tina Fey to get behind the fake news desk for Comedy Central show. If entertainment fans had their say, TV and film star Tina Fey would be the new host of “The Daily Show.” So, good luck with those contract negotiations, Comedy Central…

February 20, 2015

Mashable

Survey

January 25th

…Hours ahead of the start of Super Bowl XLIX, which will see the Seahawks and Patriots face off, Ranker.com has revealed in data exclusive to Mashable that there is more separating the fans of these teams than a few colors on some jerseys…

Business Insider

Saturday Night Live

January 24, 2015

…Now in its 40th season, “Saturday Night Live” has produced some of the funniest people of all time. Crowdsourced ranking site Ranker helped us find the funniest SNL cast members in the show’s history. Over 35,000 people voted on the best SNL cast members…

Business Insider

The Funniest People of All Time

January 20, 2015

…There are a million hilarious comedians out there, but few stand the test of time. Crowdsourced rankings website Ranker came up with a list of the funniest people of all time. They asked users to vote on the funniest comedians, actors, and producers who’ve built careers on making people laugh. Over 150,000 people voted. Below are the top 25…

Business Insider

Best Movies of the Year

December 26, 2014

…The best movies aren’t always the ones that are highly publicized. Our friends over at crowdsourced rankings website Ranker came out with a list of the best movies you may not have seen this year. Check out these 15 movies and you’ll be a film buff in no time…

First Round Review

5 Early Mistake…

… Yet today, his company Ranker draws 19 million unique visitors a month, is considered a consumer data insights treasure trove, and is solidly in the black. So, what made the difference? In this exclusive interview, Benson shares the five biggest mistakes he made — that he sees other founders make all the time — and how he overcame them to turn things around…

Business Insider

Apple vs Microsoft

October 10, 2014

Even in the age of mobile tech, few divisions cut deeper than Apple vs. Microsoft… But how are Apple people really different from Microsoft people? For a new take on this question, we turned to Ranker…

Digiday

Listicles

October 8, 2014

Listicles are part and parcel of most publishers’ arsenals, but one publisher is building an entire business around them. Ranker started in 2009 with a simple concept: create lists about just about anything and let the wisdom of the crowds determine how the items stack up…

Rich Girl

Live, Dream, Believe

September 24, 2014

Built In Los Angeles

With 6 million votes per month (and growing), Ranker conquers the world of Lists …

August 18, 2014

Listicles are conquering the web. And that is exactly how Clark Benson, CEO and founder of Ranker would have it. Ranker, a website and platform for creating listicles then ranking their contents, now receives 6 million votes per month, and has 17.5 million monthly unique visitors and growing….Read Full Article Here

Examiner.com

Ranker.com proves Time Warner is mathematically more evil than Comcast

The company apologized profusely for a tactic that some feared reflected exactly how it trained its customer service staff.

Comcast has long been troubled by a reputation for customer disservice. So I would like to bring it some relief.

In a survey organized by Ranker, almost 14,000 participants insisted that Comcast’s was not, in fact, the worst customer service in America. Not at all. Comcast came in a relatively satisfying 6th worst.

Those of critical bent might be wondering who might have succeeded to defeating Comcast’s best (worst) efforts.

Well, at No. 5 were those nice people at American Airlines. At No. 4 lurked that apogee of hospitality, Walmart. At No. 3 was the bastion of populism, Bank of America and at No. 2 was, oddly, AT&T…Read Full Article Here

Soccer Nation

Ranker Predicts Top 16 of the World Cup Better Than Nate Silver or BetFair

June 28, 2014

In a tournament full of surprises, predictions based on data from online crowdsourcing site Ranker.com have predicted more of the top 16 teams, as compared to data from Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com or the betting site BetFair.com. Specifically, Ranker was the only site to predict that underdogs Costa Rica and Algeria would make the top 16 teams in the tournament, over more prominent teams that failed to make it like England and Russia.

Data was collected from users on Ranker.com, a site that uses the “Wisdom of Crowds” to serve rankings to millions of users each month, many of whom provide their own opinions back to the site. Combining this online data with recently developed academic predictive modeling methods, Ranker Data Scientist Ravi Iyer and University of California-Irvine Professor Michael Lee developed a ranking of all 32 teams in the tournament. These predictions successfully predicted 10 of the top 16 final teams, more than predictions of the top 16 from either FiveThirtyEight and BetFair.

“While no prediction system is going to be perfect,” explained Iyer, “our results suggest that online user opinions can absolutely provide added predictive power over and above systems based on previous scores or betting behavior. The true power of this method is to start to predict outcomes that have no previous scores or betting market.” Read Full Article Here

The Next Web

Ranker rolls out its embeddable widget so you can rank all the things

May 28, 2014

Ranker has officially released its widget for sharing and contributing to its collection of crowdsourced lists about anything. The new widget is mobile-ready and includes the option for a slideshow mode when appropriate.

Since the last time we caught up with Ranker in August 2013, the company has doubled the size of its audience and grown its monthly page views by more than threefold. The company now ranks as one of Quantcast’s top 200 sites on the Web.

With the release of its widget, Ranker’s reach will become even more distributed as it works with publishers to bring its lists to their sites. During the beta phase, Ranker placed the widget on over 3,000 domains. Based on its test partners, Ranker touts up to a 50 percent increase in engagement and a 70 percent increase in time on the site…Read Full Article

Ranker

World leader in crowdsourced rankings, Ranker.com, responds to accelerated growth and expands its HQ to brand new office space.

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) March 25, 2014

Ranker.com, the world leader of crowdsourced rankings of everything, announced today that it is moving its corporate headquarters – taking over the 5th floor of their current Los Angeles high-rise at 6420 Wilshire Blvd.

Ranker.com, now a Quantcast Top 200 US Website, has been growing quite rapidly in the past six months, reaching a worldwide audience of over 13 million unique visitors per month, and doing over 200 million monthly pageviews. Ranker now has 25 employees and is looking to fill 6 open positions.

Founder and CEO Clark Benson explains what he believes has greatly attributed to the continuous growth at Ranker:

“Our users love voting on our editors’ lists, and search engines love authoritative content that is constantly being refreshed and shared. Helped by search traffic, but mainly the result of work we’ve put into making our site much stickier, our traffic has more than quadrupled year-over-year. This growth has brought in more ad revenue and allowed us to more than double our staff.”

Benson is a lifelong entrepreneur with four prior successful startups. The last was eCrush, a top 10 online dating service (acquired by Hearst, in a deal represented by Montgomery and Co). Ranker is backed by Draper Associates, Rincon Venture Partners, Siemer Ventures, Lowercase Capital, Data Collective, BullPen Capital, Gil Elbaz, Tech Coast Angels and Pasadena Angels.

About Ranker:

Ranker.com, a Quantcast Top 200 destination doing 200 million+ monthly pageviews, is a crowdsourced site and platform that consumers visit to view, rank, and vote on broad opinion-based rankings ranging from the best board games to the sexiest women over 50 to the best inexpensive cars. Outside of a few verticals such as travel and restaurants, crowdsourced answers in list format are spotty or nonexistent, even as consumer demand for opinion-based answers is far outpacing other queries. Ranker.com has a broad mix of engaging content ranging from “crowdsourced listicles” to more practical content presented in a datacentric format. Additionally, Ranker’s technology powers polls on over 2000 websites via a distributed widget.

The Wall Street Journal

Even Olympians Can’t Help Wheaties

LOS ANGELES, Calif., -Mar. 4, 2014

– After winning 18 Grand Slam tennis singles trophies, Chris Evert received an honor that still excites her: a 1987 appearance on the Wheaties cereal box. “That box is enshrined in my office,” said Evert, now a tennis analyst for ESPN.

But don’t ask her which athletes grace the current Wheaties box. “Is (that program) still going on now?” asked Evert, acknowledging that she doesn’t buy the cereal.The newest Wheaties faces are Mikaela Shiffrin and Sage Kotsenburg, the American skier and snowboarder who won gold medals at last month’s Sochi Olympics.

Yet are the world’s greatest athletes capable of selling Wheaties? Once a king of the cereal aisle, the 91-year-old brand is a laggard nowadays, ranking 17th among U.S. cereal brands, according to Euromonitor International.

.. It also wouldn’t say how many athletes have appeared on the box—a number that ranker.com, a website that has lists on anything and everything, places at 474…Read Full Article

Yahoo! News

AT&T and Time Warner Cable Ranked Worst in Customer Service Survey

The unscientific questionnaire, conducted on Ranker and unearthed by DSLReports.com, lists 50 large U.S. companies and asks visitors to vote on which among them have the worst customer service. At the top of the list with 483 votes at the time of this writing is AT&T, which is followed by Time Warner Cable with 317 votes in the No. 2 spot. Bank of America, Walmart and American Airlines round out the top-5.

As for other U.S. wireless carriers and ISPs, Comcast is ranked No. 6, Verizon is ranked No. 21, Sprint is No. 23 and Frontier is No. 38. Read Full Article

Updated for clarification and to add a note about recent J.D. Power surveys

Mobile Social Hub

The Best Polling Apps on the Web

LOS ANGELES, Calif., – 2014 –

Ranker is slightly different to others in this list, as rather than simply provide embeddable polls for other sites, it also acts as a browsable hub that invites users to make a list of their most or least favorite items. For example, you might get a question about who your favorite Doctor Who is played by, or you might find simply find a list like Vegetables I Won’t Eat – currently, it seems the radish is the most shunned of the veg world.

Users get the option to set lists for the public to vote on, or just to display so the order can’t be changed – hence why it’s a little different to some of the others featured in this roundup.

As with many of the others here though, you get the choice to create your own, populating it with images and links to make it more entertaining and engaging. As the main point of the platformisn’t quite polling in the traditional sense, focusing rather more on the community as a whole. Looking at an embedded poll (like the one above) gives options to show as many or few rows as you like. Looking at the same poll on the Web displays more pros and cons for each entry, in this case, for each character and why they’d make the best poker player.

Unlike the other apps, you also don’t get the detailed metrics that might be handy to crafting future questions or polls, making it of less use for pro pollers. Read Full Article

OnHollywood

Ranker Named One of OnHollywood’s 100 Top Private Companies 2013

LOS ANGELES, Calif., – Nov. 3, 2013

– AlwaysOn announces its seventh annual OnHollywood 100, representing the top companies that are disrupting the establishment and creating viable business models for the digital entertainment marketplace. The AlwaysOn editorial team, along with partners in the venture capital and investment community and entertainment industry experts across the globe, went out into the entrepreneurial ecosystem to find the top 100 private companies in digital entertainment that are continuing to innovate an increasingly digital Hollywood and disrupt an entrenched legacy institution.

The winners of this competition will be honored at OnHollywood Powerfest 2013, November 13, 2013. Read Full Article

The Next Web

Ranker founder Clark Benson on building a list empire

Founder Clark Benson built Ranker with the proceeds from an earlier exit fromEcrush, the teen social networking site he helped found. Traffic grew steadily over the past few years, and Ranker has placed near the top 500 for traffic in the US and among the top 100 for US mobile websites, according to Quantcast. Read Full Article

VentureBeat

Ranker raises $2M follow on round to create “opinion graph” for the Internet

LOS ANGELES, Calif., – June 27, 2013

– Crowdsourced voting platform Ranker has raised $2 million from new investors. Users vote on broad opinion topics like what toppings to put on frozen yogurt or the the 50 most epic films about the end of the world and those opinions get aggregated into list format. It has elements of Reddit and Buzzfeed and is described as a “Yelp for everything else.” It attracts more than 80 million monthly pageviews and is striving to build an “opinion graph.” Lowercase Capital, BullPen Ventures, Data Collective contributed to this follow on round, with participation from previous investors Draper Associates, Rincon Venture Partners, Siemer Ventures, TenOneTen, The Coast Angels, and Pasadena Angels. Read Full Article

Users can vote on each item in the list, follow a list, add items, and create lists of their own. Other sites, like the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, can use Ranker’s technology for their own polls… Read full article

Forbes

Ranker named one of Forbes.com’s ’15 Explosively Growing Companies to Watch This Year’

LOS ANGELES, Calif., – June 6, 2013

– Starting a company during a recession is no easy task. Growing a business exponentially during tough economic times is, in my opinion, miraculous. Below is a list of 15 innovative companies that have defied the odds and grown exponentially since being founded in the last several years. They are developing innovative products, disrupting industries and changing the world at large… See Full List

socalTECH.com

Ranker Takes $2M For Expansion Efforts

LOS ANGELES, Calif., – June 27, 2013

– Los Angeles-based Ranker, the online site which lets users rank, view, vote, and share their opinions on a wide range of topics, announced today that it has raised $2M in a follow on investment round. The starup, led by Clark Benson, said the funding came from Lowercase Capital, BullPen Ventures, Data Collective, as well as prior investors Draper Associates, Rincon Venture Partners, Siemer Ventures, TenOneTen, Tech Coast Angels and Pasadena Angels. The company said the proceeds will go towards hiring, platform expansion, and marketing. Read more

Lead 411

LOS ANGELES, Calif., – February 05, 2013

– In order to recognize the fastest growing technology companies in Los Angeles, San Diego and Santa Barbara, Lead411 is proud to announce the release of its “Hottest Companies in the Southern California” award. See Full List

How to Write a Business Plan

How to Write a Business Plan’s Interview with Clark Benson, Founder & CEO of Ranker (a LaunchPad LA startup)

January 23, 2013

– Recently we caught up with Clark Benson, Founder and CEO of a great startup called Ranker. During our interview, Clark Benson introduces us to Ranker while sharing advice abut fundrasing, applying to an accelerator program and creating a business plan. Ranker is a graduate of the LaunchPad LA accelerator program, and our first interview with a startup to go through the LaunchPad LA accelerator. A must read for all non-technical founders. Read Full Interview

Pandodaily

Mob rule: Crowdsourced listmaker Ranker grows by 300% in 18th months

October 19, 2012

– Los Angeles-based interest graph company Ranker is based on the theory that the best answer to any question is one drawn from “the wisdom of the crowd.” Currently, the site receives more than 5.4 million unique visitors a month – up threefold from a year ago – who view and create ranked lists over an extremely wide variety of subjects. Read full article

OnHollywood

Ranker included on 2012 OnHollywood Companies to Watch List

Los Angeles, October 18, 2012

– Ranker today was announced by AlwaysOn as one of the OnHollywood 100 winners. Inclusion in the OnHollywood 100 signifies leadership amongst its peers and game-changing approaches and technologies that are likely to disrupt existing and entrenched Hollywood entertainment. Ranker was specially selected by the AlwaysOn editorial team and industry experts spanning the globe based on a set of five criteria: innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value, and media buzz.

Ranker and the OnHollywood 100 companies will be honored at AlwaysOn’s sixth annual OnHollywood on October 29th and 30th, 2012, at the Museum of Flying in Santa Monica, CA. See Full List of Winners

VentureBeat

From $1.5B to half a trillion dollars: PayPal celebrates a 10th anniversary

Ten years ago today, eBay announced an acquisition that might rank as one of the most successful Silicon Valley purchases ever. In fact, it sits third on Ranker’s list of smartest tech acquisitions. I’m talking, of course, about PayPal, the “subsidiary” that now accounts for well over a third of eBay’s total revenue — and gaining. Read the Full Article

The Huffington Post

7 Sites You Should Be Wasting Time On

If Colbert’s new teeshirt and your new case of untreatable gonorrhea aren’t enough to keep you busy this afternoon, take a peek at these seven sites. We’ve hand picked them with the express purpose of distracting you and making you laugh. You’re welcome. As always, be sure to vote for your favorites and let us know if you come across any awesome time wasters you think we should feature. Read Full Article

Forbes

5 Sites That Could Have Made All The Difference In Protesting SOPA

It’s the day after “the big internet blackout,” as my NBC news station referred to the SOPA and PIPA antipiracy bills as this morning, and all systems appear to be back on schedule. Wikipedia is no longer blacked out, Reddit is up and running once more, and Google‘s infamous Doodle is no longer blocked by a big black box. All is well online, even to a point where sites like Ranker are already ranking the funniest online reactions of the horrors that come with being Wiki-less for 24 hours. Read Full Article

The Motley Fool

Should the Quality of Customer Service Factor Into Your Investing Strategy?

Having worked in the service industry for more than a decade, I’ve come to appreciate those who work on the other side of the counter. I personally know the rigors of dealing with a cornucopia of attitudes that can range from deplorable to overwhelmingly pleasant. Read Full Article

socalTECH.com

Ranker Names COO, Taps Jones For Board

Los Angeles-based Ranker, the online service which allows anyone to list and rank things on any topic, said today that it has named Mani Dhillon as Chief Operating Officer, and tapped former MySpace CEO Michael Jones for its board. Read Full Article

Infochachkie

Interview Clark Benson: Founder & CEO of Ranker.com

Ranker is a social site/platform for ranking anything, powered by semantic technology that aggregates opinions into ‘wisdom of crowds’ rankings.” Clark Benson is the Founder and CEO of Ranker.com. Prior to Ranker, Clark founded four other successful companies, including eCrush, which he sold to the Hearst Corporation in 2007. Read Full Article

semanticweb.com

Creating Semantic Lists at Ranker

A recent interview with Ranker CEO and Founder Clark Benson takes a look at what how the semantic start-up is making the most of crowdsourcing. Benson stated, “My whole life, I’ve been making lists of things… I also like the power of semantic data on the web, and the idea of linked data, so that you can really extract a lot of meaningful data and value from facts or opinions in a linked way. Read Full Article

socalTECH.com

Interview with Clark Benson, Ranker

One of the biggest forces that has emerged in the Internet in recent years has been crowdsourcing, the way the web has empowered users to drive the creation of content and information online. For today’s interview, we spoke with Clark Benson, CEO and Founder of Ranker (www.ranker.com), on how the firm is looking to harness that same force to power its own startup, which offers up a way for users to create their own ranked lists of pretty much anything. Read Full Article

Vatornews

Ranker raises $1.3 million for endless lists

Ranker, a site for listing and ranking anything and everything, announced Monday that it has raised a $1.3 million Series A round of funding led by Tim Draper at Draper Associates. Draper is joined by Rincon Venture Partners, Newport Coast Investments, Factual founder Gil Elbaz, Pasadena Angels and previous investor Siemer Venture Capital. Read Full Article

BuzzFeed

Here are 10 Tips from BuzzFeed to Make Your Content Go Viral

I recently had the pleasure of spending an hour with Jon Steinberg, president of Buzzfeed, a company who focuses on helping media companies make their content go viral. Read Full Article

TechCrunch

Ranker Lands $1.3 Million From Tim Draper And Others, Tries To Rank *Everything*

Exclusive – Ranker has secured a $1.3 million Series A round of funding led by Tim Draper at Draper Associates. Other investors who are backing the list making service include Rincon Venture Partners, Newport Coast Investments, Factual founder Gil Elbaz, Pasadena Angels and previous investor Siemer Venture Capital. read full article

VentureBeat

Deals & More: Ranker gets $1.4M to let users rank any topic

Ranker raises $1.4M for user-generated rankings: The list aggregation company has raised a first round of funding led by Tim Draper at Draper Associates/DFJ with participation from Rincon Venture Partners, Newport Coast Investments and others. Based in Los Angeles, the startup allows site visitors to vote on topics, which Ranker then combines into rankings. Read Full Article

Reuters

Deals & More: Ranker gets $1.4M to let users rank any topic

Ranker raises $1.4M for user-generated rankings: The list aggregation company has raised a first round of funding led by Tim Draper at Draper Associates/DFJ with participation from Rincon Venture Partners, Newport Coast Investments and others. Read Full Article

socalTECH.com

Ranker Raises $1.3M

Los Angeles-based Ranker, the startup headed by Clark Benson which allows users to rank anything they want in a list, has raised $1.3M in a Series A funding. Read Full Article

The Wall Street Journal

Ranker Lands $1.3 Million From Tim Draper And Others, Tries To Rank *Everything*

Exclusive – Ranker has secured a $1.3 million Series A round of funding led by Tim Draper at Draper Associates. Other investors who are backing the list making service include Rincon Venture Partners, Newport Coast Investments, Factual founder Gil Elbaz, Pasadena Angels and previous investor Siemer… Read Full Article

Business Insider

Ranker Lands $1.3 Million From Tim Draper And Others, Tries To Rank *Everything*

Exclusive – Ranker has secured a $1.3 million Series A round of funding led by Tim Draper at Draper Associates. Other investors who are backing the list making service include Rincon Venture Partners, Newport Coast Investments, Factual founder Gil Elbaz, Pasadena Angels… Read Full Article

Ranker

Clark Benson: Founder of Ranker & Serial Entrepreneur

Clark Benson is the founder of Ranker, a consumer web startup that is a platform for ranking . . . anything. Ranker is Benson’s 5th startup; all prior startups were successes – real businesses, real profitability. Read Full Article

TechCrunch

Ranker Leaves Beta, Launches ‘Wisdom of Crowds’ Lists

List making platform Ranker has officially left beta after 10 months, with today’s launch of the Community Lists feature. A service for “ranking anything in the universe,” Ranker has a database of over 6 million items for list inclusion, with over 10,000 lists being created during Ranker’s beta. Read Full Article

Mixergy

The Viral Growth of eCrush, and Launch of Ranker – With Clark Benson

Today, Clark is building Ranker, a platform for ranking anything in the universe. We spent some time in the interview talking about how he’s growing it. Read Full Article

socalTECH.com

Ranker Gets $750K

Los Angeles-based Ranker, an online web site which allows users to create their own lists, and share them with friends, said Thursday evening that the firm has raised $750,000 in a seed investment round, part of a planned $1M funding effort. According to the firm, the round was led by Siemer Venture Capital, along with un-named angel investors. Ranker said that those angels include investors in founder Clark Benson’s former startup, eCrush, which was sold to Hearst Corporation in 2006. The new funding brings the company’s total raised to $1.75M. Read Full Article

VentureBeat

Ranker Nets $750K In Seed Money

Up-and-coming list aggregator Ranker.com is announcing another $750,000 in seed financing, part of a planned $1 million second round. The first $1 million came from company founder Clark Benson, who sold eCrush to Hearst Media in 2006. The second round is led by Siemer Venture Capital and includes a group of angels affiliated with eCrush. Read Full Article

PC World

Ranker: List-o-mania!

There’s something about a list that the average Web surfer just can’t resist. Those numbered nuggets of snarky opinion draw us in every time. Ranker, in fact, has built a whole site around lists. You can browse lists created by other users (“Top 10 Muppet Mashups,” “Literary Classics You Should Pretend You’ve Read,” and “Most Selfish Professional Athletes” are just a few choices), or you can use Ranker’s free tools to create your own list. Read Full Article

AppAppeal

AppAppeal

Ranker gives users a forum to share their favorite things. The site allows users to list various items that cover a wide range of categories. These items are then given a rank by the user and can be voted on by others in the Ranker community. Users can show their love of an item by voting for it on Ranker. The categories listed include sports, television, music, film, people, cars, tech, books, comics, arts, travel, places, food, drink, and world. Read Full Article